Changing lifestyles affect attitudes
towards food and have an adverse impact on public
health.

Foodcounts®
emphasises the importance of
having a broad knowledge of the food we eat - in terms of content, storage, and preparation -

provides an optional system for on-line ordering from supermarkets, including
a first-ever mobile phone interface.

Our
ultimate objective is to construct a food intelligence network centred
on a UK national
database of all bar-coded foods. The immediate plan is to
focus on the category of ready meals.

2.
WHAT IS IT?

Foodcounts® is a multi-level food information and ordering service incorporating state
of the art voice-interface. This system is based on a new concept in data services provision.
These
terms are important keys to the understanding of our proposal:-

FoodACT™ contains the
food-item-knowledge collated
from individual food-item profiles. This content interacts with the FoodID™
database. It is this feature that provides the high levels
of data-manipulation.

FoodXTN™is a secure extension database in which consumer, retailer
and manufacturer profiles can be safely stored. Access is through our
proprietary CoreID™ technology. This gives us the necessary security to communicate and integrate with 3rd party databases.

Full
scale inter-operability is achieved by introducing compatible
voice and keyboard technologies:-

a self-learning phonetic database of all base food-items including
dialect and colloquial variations

a proprietary phonetic vocabulary database for all quantifiers and
modifiers

a proprietary phonetic vocabulary database. for the typologies within
our food-item-taxonomy

The
market for an inter-operable food intelligence network will be universal. Food management,
today, is an analogy of financial management 35
years ago. The system shift, then, from cash to encoded-plastic was down to
an inaugural database development including database inter-connections between consumers and
the various suppliers.
Foodcounts® technology, in some respects, mirrors
encoded-plastic interchange, and is sufficiently novel to result in a
similar shift in consumer behaviour towards food . We also adopt
the same demand-pull marketing strategy, by wholesaling our data
services on a B2B basis.

The
Foodcounts®
system can be used anywhere there are internet connections and will operate in all environments within mobile or digital
signal areas.

Therefore,
regardless of location,
Foodcounts® gives finger tip access to
food-item-knowledge. It is this ease of access, regardless of location,
that represents a significant innovation and removes the major obstacle
of consumer inertia.

7. WHEN WILL IT BE USED

The
first stage of the
Foodcounts® product development programme will be to
produce a fully working prototype built around the food-item class
of convenience and ready meals. There are 3000 such main brand and own
brand food-items. Our ID database will also include 1000 unbranded, or
base food-items, representing the complete range of prepared meal
ingredients.

This
initial development will take 9 months.

The
second stage will extend the ID database to include all main brand
food-items. The time frame will be determined by the degree of
co-operation from food-item manufacturers. An at-worst estimate is 6
months.

The
final stages will involve the incorporation of own brand food-items.
This will be a simple data interchange with the
retailers and manufactures; and timings will be determined by the commercial and
competitive issues that are raised over development period.